12:29 pm

Tue July 17, 2012

Sometimes, 4Chan Users Do The Right Thing

4Chan is a cesspool. That's not even editorializing. A few minutes on the notorious, free-for-all Internet message board that gave birth to Anonymous will — in the famous words of Gawker — "melt your brain."

But every once in a while, they do the right thing — like today.

As Hypervocal reports, last night a 4Chan user posted a picture of someone standing on two containers full of lettuce with the taunting caption: "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King."

Within 15 minutes, the community turned on him and started analyzing the picture. The original poster didn't realize — or didn't think — that embedded within the image was GPS data. Most camera-phones and some cameras automatically lace images with that information.

The anons — as they are called — tracked down the coordinates to a Cleveland Burger King. One of them called the manager, and a few others called local news outlets.

"We are aware of the photo that was allegedly posted by an employee at a BURGER KING® restaurant in Ohio and are taking the issue very seriously. Food safety is a top priority for BURGER KING® restaurants and the company has strict policies regarding its food handling procedures. We are investigating the matter and will take appropriate action as necessary."

So, yeah, 4Chan did good.

Update at 3:01 p.m. ET. In Fairness:

Reader "Cope Freeland," in the comments section writes: "Sometimes they do good? They do good quite a bit actually. They don't tolerate cat and/or dog abusers/killers and track them down quite frequently."